I have this absolutely great CD, Tony Scott Sung Heroes: Featuring Bill Evans, Scott La Faro, Paul Motian [in other words the greatest Bill Evans Trio--with poor old unfortunate Scotty La Faro (killed in a car wreck on Long Island) (Great bass players die young sometimes, ie, Jimmy Blanton, Tommy Potter, George Tucker, Scotty La Faro--even Paul Chambers and Sam Jones)]. This is on something called the Sunnyside label, a French label (Tony Scott lived expatriated in Europe after jazz started being killed by the Brit rock invaders (the British have stolen their cultures since the days of the blessed Empire), living especially in Rome for many years.
I quote from the "liner" notes to this CD--the words are Tony's: [Talking about the jazz fab fifties and 52nd Street and the Old Cats, Tony says] "The older men were interested in young musicians in those days. The 1940s were different; there was something special among people who really wanted to play.... Ben Webster took me under his wing; he watched over me and became my teacher. He told me to move from club to club along the 52nd Street strip and pick up as much as I could. Just being around provided the sort of experience that young players can't find today [1989].... The great drummer Sid Catlett -- he gave me a few lessons. 'WHAT!' he'd always say, nostrils flaring, if somebody made a mistake. 'The Street' wasn't perfect. But we didn't realize how valuable it was until the clubs began changing their policy in the late 1940s. For a while they were strip joints, then closed permanently." "The laboratory was gone" the liner note writer adds, and that's the truth. The laboratories are all gone when it comes to jazz now--unless you're in the New Orleans new jazz world, that world created by Wynton Marsalis who, though he has a large knowledge about jazz, he's not the master he seems to be--not to me, at least--I understand Herbie Hancock's rejection of Wynton's right to be the definer of jazz. Herbie followed Miles into fusion, which perhaps was the right direction for jazz. Miles last works were some of his best starting with that truly wonderful In a Silent Way album around 1977--after Brit Rock had driven jazz from the FM radio dial--when I moved to NYC there were three jazz stations. WBLS was a jazz station. Riverside Radio, the radio station of Columbia University, had hours and hours of jazz--Phil Schaap would play every recording ever recorded by as many masters as he could--I've recorded the complete works of Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Charles Parker Jr., Miles Davis, Roy Eldredge, Gene Krupa, Bix Biederbeck, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Andy Kirk, Duke Ellington, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown--STOP--oh what a great trumpet player Brownie was--killed in a car wreck near Buffalo, New York, hurrying back to NYC from Cleveland or somewhere Clifford Brown-Max Roach gig to make the next gig--Max Roach and Harold Land flew back to NYC but Clifford and Bud Powell's young brother, very talented pianist Richie Powell, decided to drive back--they were slammed head-on going fast--jazz guys drove fast--they had to, and it killed both Richie and Clifford--damn! Jazz guys are tragic heroes to me--the things they went through to get this wonderfully unique American music out of their blood, their minds--if you don't have music inside you that has to come out you can't understand this--you know like when I was 6 years old I looked at a piano and just knew I had to learn to play it--and I did, I learned to play Bach, Chopin, von Weber, Mozart, but it wasn't my music--it wasn't what I had in me--and then I heard Charles Parker Jr. and Dizzy Gillespie, and "Groovin' High" and "Billie's Bounce" and "Birk's Works" and you know them if you know where I'm coming from--and that music was the music I knew was the music I felt inside me and dammit, I started learning first how to get on the beat--the downbeat--and then how to breathe right and-ah 1 and 2 and 3 and 4--and then you played the intro and ran down the melody and then, the release, then the finger pointed at you and you were free to pour your whole musical force out your arms out your fingers and onto those wonderful ivory keys of a real piano, especially an American old Steinway grand--the most wonderful pianos every made--digging your fingers into those keys to hit them solidly and then you rocked from side to side and not up and down like the 2/4 white bands played.
Charlie Parker totally dominated Tony Scott's thinking after he first heard Parker on the laboratory street, 52nd Street, and in those early 1950s, Tony was a poll-winning clarinet player, he and the great swinging Buddy De Franco (Italian clarinet players), were one and two for years in the Downbeat Jazz Poll, the jazz poll in those days. And Tony became a Birdhead--and Bird lived in him on after Bird died like Bird lived in all of us who came under his influence--we learned Parker's solos note-for-note and played his licks over and over, our scales, and if a piano player could learn to play a Parker line, by God you were a winner--we learned every Parker note of every Parker tune--dig?--and that's how Charles Parker, Jr., Bird, continues to Live on to this day in us "old" jazzmen/women, jazz people like myself and certainly Tony Scott.
So I hadn't thought about Tony Scott in years, though I listen to this Sung Heroes CD a hell of a lot (Tony also was a proficient pianist, guitarist, and saxophonist); you know, I hadn't thought about whether he was dead or alive. I knew he'd have to be pretty old, so I went looking for him on the Internet and I found a Website for him run by one of his daughters from Italy. I was absorbed in the site in Tony's writings--he has a huge book on his site he wrote about Charles Parker--it has never been published (hey, opportunity for one of you rich guys--publish a nice edition of it and give it to the jazz world)--but the latest update I could find was like 2000 and then no more. I accidentally came across the Website of bass player Doug Ramsey [Doug wrote Take Five a biography of Brubeck altoist Paul Desmond] and sure enough, Doug sadly reported that Tony had left the stage--at 85 years--and god-damn great years--except a divorce from his precious Fran, mother of his two daughters, left him kind'a whacky in Rome, but really not--in some of his later notes he mentions a nice young lady he's just had a weekend with in Rome--we jazz guys get over losing our women--we have to we lose them so frequently. So here ya go. Let me link you to Tony's site and then scroll on down and read Doug Ramsey's tribute to the GREAT TONY SCOTT. Paradisio! Tony!
http://www.tonyscott.it/
And now from Doug Ramsey, a Letter From Tony:
Tony Scott
Tony Scott's death at eighty-five in Rome on March 28 set off a flurry of remembering by people who may not have thought about him for years. A clarinetist with a large sense of daring, a massive sound and nearly supernatural upper range, Scott was an important player in the New York bebop milieu of the late 1940s, an intimate of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. He was an encourager of post-bop talent in the fifties. He exposed Bill Evans as the pianist's career began to accelerate in the mid-1950s, hiring Evans regularly and featuring him on recordings.
Whether or not he initially intended to be, with a big-selling album, Music For Zen Meditation, in the sixties Scott was a pioneer of what came to be known as new age and world music. He was also a character known, even celebrated, for his conviction, flamboyance and occasional outrageousness. Jazz Times has a comprehensive, if rather dry, Scott obituary on its web site. The New York Times obit includes a splendid latterday photograph and the late critic John S. Wilson's description of Scott "playing his clarinet in his own uncompromisingly distinctive manner, a manner which encompasses both a feathery, light-as-air impressionism and an intense, emotional ferocity that makes the old-time 'hot' men sound as though they were blowing icicles."
Scott and I conducted a sporadic correspondence that began after I did a radio program about him in 1967. It fell off for a few years, then resumed in October of 1982 with a letter from Rome. I'm sharing the letter with you because it gives a sense of Scott's personality and the passion with which he lived his life. I retain his punctuation, spelling and usage. My clarifications are in parentheses.
Hello Doug are you still there? I left NYC for Europe 1967. To Africa 1968/70. Live Italy 1970 till now. I am still alive and kicking. I have written a book. 700 pages of my life in jazz with Bird Lady Ben (Charlie Parker, Billie Holday, Ben Webster), 52nd St, Harlem, jazz in NYC 1939 till I left in 1959. My life in jazz with the giants, my travels, philosophy. About 100 photos I took of Lady Miles Ben Prez Mahalia (Holiday, Davis, Webster, Jackson).My past has been 1967 to Europe with wife/child. 1968/70 to Africa playing a jazz show with locals I trained in luxury hotels. Then settled in Senegal 5 months study African music/rhythms.
1970 to Italy Roma to settle. Played mostly with Romano Mussolini on tour. Enjoyed life in Roma. 1975 divorced. Wife remarried. Two daughters Nina 10 Monica 5 live in Roma. I leave Italy for jobs in Europe for 2 years. Tired of travel. Stay in Roma 1977/78 see daughters - practice piano write music for big bands in Italy and Europe. Pays aboutr $3000 a show total for 3 day rehearsal & radio concert with public. 1979/80 travel around Europe always based in Roma.
1981 in and out of Italy. 1982 stay Holland 8 months with nice lady. Have $10,000 dental work. Lose feeling to play clarinet. Write book. Made a suite "African Bird" dedicated to Charlie Parker in 1981. Recorded in London. Glenn Ferris (USA) trombone, percussion, marimbas, flute, alto and vocal. Hope to sell in USA when I come in November for one month to sell book and "African Bird."
See lots of old friends on tour Dizzy Buddy Blakey (Gillespie, De Franco, Art Blakey). Seems they are all here to work. I like Italy. My roots. I played with Kenny Clarke (drummer) in Sicily at festival. Good success. We played bebop. I want to do college tour with Kenny plus talk and photos & films of old days, Bird Monk Harlem. Kenny is 69 but OK and wants to make college tour with me. I need to play with my cats to get an urge to play clarinet.
My Music For Zen Meditation gives me money to live on. Sells 15,000 a year for 10 years now. 10,000 in Europe, 5,000 in USA. Japan put out my RCA Big Band with Clark Thad (Terry, Jones), Bill Evans. Made 1956. Have you got it?
In USA, thinking of teaming up with Buddy De Franco for a clarinet clan show. Regards to any fans or friends.
Tony
Scott's autobiography has never found a publisher. I'm told that members of his family are still trying to place it. His web site, yet to be updated with his death, has historical sections and photos.
Posted by dramsey at April 5, 2007 1:05 AM
Doug's Rifftide notes can be found here:
http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/
thegrowlingwolf GOODBYE, TONY SCOTT--Still Livin' in Me, Tony, Baby!
for The Daily Growler
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